Central Union Mission
Case For Support
Homelessness and poverty are among the most painful and challenging issues facing our community today. The destructive hardship, hunger and hopelessness faced by the broken and vulnerable men, women and children in our city is profound. Regrettably, Washington, DC, has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation.
Central Union Mission is a faith-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the oldest private social service agency in Washington, DC. For 138 years, the Mission has been a leader in serving people experiencing homelessness and poverty in Washington, DC, area. Compelled by its Christian faith, the Mission was initially founded with the goal of serving homeless veterans of the Civil War. Over time, its work has grown substantially to serve men, women and children of all faiths and backgrounds in need in the nation’s capital.
Today, the Mission remains 100 percent privately-funded and operates four facilities that provide a world-class platform to achieve long-term, sustainable and systemic change in the lives of the people it serves, while daily meeting the immediate needs of the chronically homeless and those at-risk of homelessness and poverty. GuideStar has awarded Central Union Mission a Gold Seal for financial transparency. GreatNonProfits has given the organization its Top-Rated award.
The Mission’s core programs and expertise include:
- Men’s Shelter: Feeds and shelters up to 170-200 men per day (approximately 62,000 bed-nights per year) and offers comprehensive in-house services, including: medical, dental and psychiatric care; addiction recovery; veterans support; spiritual direction; vocational training; education; employment placement; legal support and social services. The centerpiece of the support provided by the men’s shelter is a holistic, Christ-centered transformation and workforce development program for men that is geared for long-term, sustainable change.
- Family Ministry Center: Provides food and clothing to approximately 5,750 people per month (families, including many single mothers, men, grandparent care-givers and isolated senior citizens). We distribute groceries that provide an estimated three million meals each year.
- Lambert House: Provides transitional housing for up to 24 people at a time. Men who are on the road to recovery are offered an opportunity to live in a safe, clean and respectful environment where they can leave behind their former lifestyles and continue to transform their lives to become productive citizens and reconnect to their respective families and communities.
- Camp Bennett: Provides a full summer camp experience every year for nearly 400 youth who live in poverty. For many, this is their first time attending sleepaway camp and is an escape from the city and the limited opportunities and negative influences prevalent in their neighborhoods. The camp’s gymnasium also supports local boys and girls club activities, community groups and area churches each week.
Clearly, we are not just a homeless shelter, but we are both a provider of life-sustaining food and shelter and an agent of long-term transformation. We serve all people, regardless of race, religion, age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or any other characteristic.
Our Focus and Our Future
Our vision is to provide a world-class platform to achieve long-term, sustainable and systemic change in the lives of the people we serve, while daily meeting the immediate needs of the chronically homeless and those at-risk of homelessness and poverty.
Our passion is to serve and our programs will continue to do what we have done so well for 135+ years; shelter the homeless and feed the hungry. However, we are not content to simply maintain the status quo. We are striving to parlay our years of experience and expertise to restore the men we serve to wholeness in order for them to permanently get off of the streets, and we are serving women and children to ensure their basic needs are being met and mitigate their risk of homelessness.
Our Strategic Plan Focuses On Three Pillars: Restoration and Transformation Program
People end up homeless for a variety of reasons. On the streets, a person’s physical, emotional and psychological health becomes compromised and an acculturated lifestyle makes it increasingly difficult to permanently escape homelessness. Once this cycle sets in, a person’s ability to acquire and maintain a job is diminished, family relationships are destroyed, addictions emerge, mental and physical health declines, self-esteem drops and a downward spiral continues.
Central Union Mission created the Restoration and Transformation Program (RTP) to provide a platform for men who have the desire and mental/emotional wherewithal to rehabilitate and stabilize all aspects of their lives and return to normal life. The 18 to 24 month program begins with a robust assessment of each person’s mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, educational and vocational status and an Individual Development Plan is created. A multidisciplinary team of social workers, chaplains, teachers, vocational instructors, doctors, therapists, and others walk with each man toward transformation. The goal is transformation and systemic, life-long change through comprehensive wrap-around services.
The vast majority of men who come to the Mission suffer with some history of addiction. We know that unless the addiction is addressed at the beginning, a person will not be successful in our program (or in life), so we provide both in-house programs to correct addictions, as well as intensive residential treatment through a close partnership with a third-party provider. Once a man is fully matriculated into the program, he is provided with a stable and safe environment with food and shelter so that he can focus on the hard work ahead of him.
The program and each day is highly structured, and over the course of the program every aspect of their lives are being addressed and transformed. Progressively, each man walks through his past issues, destructive thought and behavior patterns are addressed, addiction treatment continues, physical/dental/mental health issues are treated and their spiritual beliefs are explored. A strong program for workforce development and education provides opportunities to attain a high school diploma, skill certifications, life-skills, hard and soft job skills and long term employment placement. The goals are to equip each man with what he needs to be successful in the long-term and before he leaves our facility, we work to ensure he has a job, transitional or permanent housing, life skills, ongoing addiction support, and a church partnership, if desired. Restoration of family relationships are explored, as well.
Comprehensive Family Resource Center
The path to staying off of the streets, as well as the strategy to rebound from the impact of COVID, requires more than the provision of food and temporary housing. While these two essential things are absolutely needed and largely available in Washington, there is a greater void and need for comprehensive “wrap-around services;” those services that rebuild, restore and equip people for success.
In order to stabilize their families, return to the workforce and regain self-sufficiency, people impacted by poverty and/or the pandemic face a variety of challenges. The Mission has an established track-record and programs to help people in need improve their situations through social work, counseling, addiction support, education, job training and placement. Over the past three years, the Mission has expanded its social work services and refined its PATHWAYS Workforce Development and Education program, which has successfully helped rehabilitate and place in long-term jobs an average of 106 people experiencing homelessness each year.
The Mission’s whole-person approach will introduce a similar and uniquely tailored set of wrap-around services for the women and men who seek the support of the proposed Comprehensive Family Resource Center. This will include:
Job Training and Placement – we will help equip people for the new economy by expanding internal programming and partnerships with United Planning Organization, DC Central Kitchen, Building Futures, technical trade organizations and others. The Mission will offer specialized in-house and external job training and certifications; plus job placement counselors will mentor and guide program participants with their job searches and facilitate job placements;
Education – through both in-house specialists and a partnership with Saylor Academy, Catholic University of America, and University of District of Columbia adult family members will be assessed, enrolled in classes and coached to advance their academic and career goals; in-house classes will also be offered in life skills, citizenship, parenting, nutrition, budget management, and more;
Digital Literacy & Computer Access – to support participants’ educational and professional development, the Mission will provide instruction in computer skills and access to a computer library and resource center;
Social Work and Benefits Acquisition – in-house social workers will help individuals access the public benefits and other resources that are available to them; they will also partner with local health and human service agencies to help enroll individuals in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, School Lunch Program for their children, and other benefits; plus they will provide targeted support for veterans to ensure they get the maximum health, housing, and other assistance benefits that they are due. Our social workers will help those who are struggling mentally or emotionally from the impact of the pandemic, along with other debilitating challenges;
Parenting Classes – aimed at helping parents to adopt healthy behaviors and strategies to ensure healthy child development;
Child Day Care Guidance – providing referrals for daycare centers so that parents can pursue education and employment opportunities while their children receive loving care;
Housing – in addition to providing accommodations at our shelter and transition home, we will help individuals, families, senior citizens and the disabled find temporary – and ultimately long-term – housing by expanding our partnerships with DC Government, So Others Might Eat, Samaritan Inns, private housing entities and others;
ESL Classes – The Mission will provide English language training to those whose are speakers of other languages;
Healthcare – expanding our existing partnerships with Georgetown University Hospital, Unity Healthcare, and others in order to provide accessible in-house medical and mental health services, as well as assistance with acquiring insurance for families;
Addiction Recovery – building on our many years of experience providing this service at our shelter, we will assist those who struggle with addictions to overcome that burden;
Transportation Assistance – expanding its partnerships with Capital Bikeshare and public transportation providers so that family members have a means to get to work and classes;
Veterans Benefits – expand the Mission’s partnership with the Veteran’s Administration, Disabled American Veterans, Pathways to Housing, Friendship Place and other service providers to ensure that veterans get the maximum health, housing, and assistance benefits that they are due;
Legal Assistance – expanding services through our in-house partnership with Christian Legal Aid to help family members resolve their personal legal troubles, evictions, debts and other legal problems;
“Micro-Loans” – the Mission will offer small loans to families who need assistance with things like a security deposit for an apartment or equipment for a new job. This will be tightly managed and people will need to qualify;
Spiritual Discipleship – The Mission will expand its offering of chaplain services, spiritual care, Bible studies and discipleship;
And, of course, food and clothing.
Community Collaboration and Peer Leadership
Combatting homelessness and poverty requires a vast array of agencies, services and partnerships. Public- private partnerships are critical, as well. While these populations are served by a number of wonderful charities, churches and DC government agencies, there is a critical need for increased partnership, collaboration and advocacy to avoid duplication, mitigate gaps in service delivery and promote shared investments in the community.
As a long-standing leading voice against homelessness and poverty in DC, we are working to provide additional leadership, direction and connectedness among stakeholders. As such, we are engaging both DC government and our peers to “move-the-needle” on accessibility and coordination of services, and to better leverage resources and reduce duplication of efforts where they may be wasteful. Among churches and other faith-based institutions, we are catalyzing a movement for these groups to prioritize homelessness and local poverty among their ministry objectives.
The goal is to increase accessibility of services for helping people in need while creating more efficiency and impact.
Why This and Why Us?
Washington, DC, has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the nation. Despite the common misperception that all homeless people are either drug users, mentally ill or just not trying hard enough, the reality is that people from all walks of life fall victim to it — young, old, male, female, singles and families, educated, uneducated, black, white, brown and all ethnicities and nationalities. Homelessness and poverty painfully dehumanizes individuals and puts stress on our socio-economic systems. It is a problem that civil society must own.
The work of Central Union Mission and its strategic plan helps restore hope and dignity to these men, women and children, and helps us fulfill the Biblical calling to “love thy neighbor.” Moreover, the Mission’s work helps to create safer streets, reduce unemployment, and reduce expense on local government. The Mission stands as an indispensable partner for individuals, churches, corporations, government and foundations in our collective efforts to help those in need in our nation’s capital. Our strengths are found in the following:
Our Differentiators:
- Focus on men, women, children, families, and senior citizens
- More than 138 years of experience and expertise; the oldest private social service agency in Washington, DC
- Comprehensive programmatic approach to well-being: physical, mental, emotional, vocational, educational, spiritual, financial, familial, legal, et al
- Proven impact: 300,000 bags of groceries and 62,000 bed nights of shelter each year
- Proven success: over 65 percent of the Mission’s transformation program graduates are thriving
- Well-established education, job training and job placement programs
- Not simply a shelter: the Mission provide both a shelter and a food pantry bolstered with a full-spectrum of wraparound services for sustainable impact and change
- Evidence-based programming and innovation geared toward long-term success of individuals
- Adaptive to changing community and individual needs
- Compelled by faith, but the Mission does not compel its faith on others; we serve anybody
- Efficiency: Low administrative rate, leverage of $8 million in gifts-in-kind, extensive volunteer support and service-provider partnerships allow more funds to flow through to programming
- We have been a trusted partner to tens of thousands of individuals, corporations, foundations and churches for over 100 years
- Strong and experienced executive leadership
- Focus on outcomes, not just outputs
- 100 percent privately funded
- Highly rated: GuideStar, Charity Navigator, ECFA, GreatNonprofits
MEN’S MINISTRY PROGRAMS
Renewing hope, restoring family relationships and returning once-broken men to productive lives.
HELP FOR WOMEN
Central Union Mission helps low-income and homeless women in our community by helping to ensure they get the assistance they Our Family Ministry Center provides women with food, clothing,
FAMILY PROGRAMS
Serving poor and low-income families with food, clothing and compassionate care.
Transitional Housing at Bennett House
Men who are on the road to recovery are offered an opportunity to live in a safe, clean and respectful environment.
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
Our Workforce Development and Education program moves Mission Men from a state of dependence and homelessness to long-term economic self-sufficiency through employment permanence.
COMMUNITY SERVICES
Central Union Mission’s calendar is full of activities for helping people in need. Please check here for ways to get help for your family—or for how to volunteer to help others.
CAMP BENNETT CHRISTIAN MINISTRY CENTER
The Camp Bennett Christian Ministry Center exists to provide an affordable venue for events, camps, retreats and other activities directly related to Christian ministry and Christian purpose. Camp Bennett also offers local sports team rental access to gym and field facilities.
FAMILY PROGRAMS
SOCIAL WORK DEPARTMENT
The Social Work program uses a holistic approach to transforming men from dependency to independence through a comprehensive service delivery support system that meets both spiritual and physical n…